That the most important secret information agency in London, an organization which had come to be looked upon as the most enterprising and trustworthy there had ever been in the Metropolis, and which half the peerage, to say nothing of the ordinary aristocracy, had at one time and another consulted in confidence, should suddenly be discovered to be nothing more than the headquarters of a nest of rogues and blackmailers, dealt Society a terrible blow. The blow was all the harder because clients of the so-called Metropolitan Secret Agency knew they had poured into the ears of the benevolent-looking old man who called himself Alix Stothert, secrets about themselves, their relatives, and their friends, which they would not for untold gold have related had they dreamed such secrets might ever be revealed. And now, to their horror, it seemed that at least a dozen well-known Society people, or rather people well-known in Society and believed to be the “soul of honor,” were, and had been all the time, active members of the “Agency Gang,” as it was now termed, prominent among them being Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson, Aloysius Stapleton, handsome young Archie La Planta, and the rich retired tradesman and his wife, Julius and Marietta Stringborg, to name only a few. No wonder the Metropolitan Secret Agency had always known so much about the intimate affairs of everybody in London who “mattered,” and about the secret concerns of rich county folk throughout the country! The knowledge possessed by the notorious Bertha Trost of Clifford Street, who during the war had been quietly pushed out of the country as an “undesirable alien” had been insignificant by comparison, people said. And the Agency’s “methods of procedure” had been extremely simple. One of their plans had consisted in worming out of useful clients as much private information as possible of a compromising nature, not only about themselves, but about their acquaintances and friends, piecing it all together, and then, at a later date, instructing some accomplice to approach or write anonymously to the prospective victims, threatening them with public exposure if they refused to pay heavily for secrecy. And so cleverly was this always done that the Agency invariably safeguarded itself against risk of discovery. Another method of procedure, equally effective, consisted in selling secretly, at an enormous profit, the strange Chinese drug smuggled into the country by Alphonse Michaud, and accomplices would then threaten with exposure persons having it in their possession.